Two young boys on the street stroll arm-in-arm on a sunny Sunday morning. They could be boys anywhere. But they’re not. They casually inhale glue fumes from a plastic bag that they pass back and forth as if they were sharing a Coke. A policeman on motorbike drives past. Three Germans in expensive trekking gear quietly windowshop. No one gives them a second glace. This is Kathmandu, Nepal.
I stay with a Nepali family, just outside the main tourist ghetto, Thamel. But it feels a world away. The streets are deep mud as this is monsoon season. Piles of rubbish, open sewers, and homicidal taxi drivers make navigation…fun. Once a stranger gave me a ride home on his motorcycle. Turns out he lives below me. As the only foreigner in the neighborhood, most people in the area recognize me after just 3 weeks. But as I walked home late last night, a man chatting on a corner with his friends called “Hello, Hello, wrong way, sir” as I turned into my dead-end courtyard. “No, it’s okay. I stay here, but thanks.” Well, at least the dogs in dark alcoves don’t bark at me anymore. They recognize me.
That’s a good thing because everything that happens here or in any of the flats on my courtyard is amplified and broadcast to all of the flats. This means that at any time of day or night, you can hear people talking, laughing, cooking, cleaning, washing. Bollywood music bounces around, flutes intertwining with the cries of a boy that walks the street each morning advertising his skills as a porter to anyone that can hear. At 7:15 promptly each day a woman begins pounding spices with mortar and pestle in the flat adjoining my own. I always wake with a start, thinking that the rhythm must be Rajesh, my friend and owner of this whole building, knocking on my door. I add my own sounds to the courtyard racket: American indie rock, NPR podcasts, downloaded movies.
I just finished a short course in audio storytelling taught by independent radio producer, Jack Chance from Bozeman, MT. For my first assignment, I went to Pashupati, the holiest temple in Nepal. Anya Vaverko, the woman that organized the workshop, and I spent the day with the homeless, dreadlocked holy men, or saddhu babas, that live there.
So here at last is my first audio story, "The Babas of Pashupati." Enjoy and please give me feedback! I know there are some audio quality issues to work out as I get better at editing. Let me know what you think of the content, my voice-over style, the length and pacing, anything. I really want to get better at this, so I need objective opinions. Don't worry about my feelings! Lay on the criticism, as long as it's constructive.
